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Sunday, June 30, 2013

The word “home” does
not simply mean the physical structure in which one lives. “Home” represents happiness, family, love, emotional security, and familiarity.
When all of these are taken away, yet a person possesses a strong
foundation, resilience and hope, a person’s life can be rebuilt. Matthew Fraser is one such person.

Mr. Fraser is an exceedingly well-educated man, with degrees from universities in Canada, Britain, and France. In 1985 he went to Paris to earn his doctorate in political science atTheInstitut
d'études politiques de Paris, known
colloquially as “Sciences Po.” He spent
the next six years there. Most of us who
have had the opportunity to be a student fondly recall that period of our life,
and Mr. Fraser is no exception. That
time becomes intrinsically wrapped up in our memories with a sense of place, popular
culture, and friends. Mr.
Fraser,a British-Canadian, returned to Toronto and became a newspaper
journalist. He met Rebecca Gotlieb, an
attorney, at a dinner party in the mid-1990s.
They fell in love, married, and shared a life together. Mr. Fraser and Miss Gotlieb were raising her
son David, from her first marriage, and had another member of their
family: Oscar, aBichon Frisé.Tragically,in January 2003 Miss Gotlieb fell ill, was
diagnosed with vascular cancer, and died within a fortnight. David, then age ten, went to London to live
with his father. Mr. Fraser was so
bereaved that he decided Oscar needed a companion, and he adopted a second
Bichon who he named Leo. His career as a
journalist and co-host of a weekly television news show had changed as well. With nothing left for him in Toronto, in 2006
Mr. Fraser accepted a part-time position as a research fellow in Fontainebleau,
France just thirty-five miles south of Paris.
And Paris was an old friend. He
brought his two best friends, Oscar and Leo, with him. By far, the most satisfying aspect of this
memoir is Mr. Fraser’s relationship with his two bichons. His “furry kids” are his link to the world,
the world of nature, the world of people, and the world of the living.

After residingfor four years in Fontainebleau, and
enduring a weekly commute to lecture at the American University in Paris, as
well as at Sciences Po, Mr. Fraser locates a flat (apartment) for rent. And what a flat! The building is an Art Deco classic. Best of all, it is in in the 7th arrondisement
on Quai d’Orsay, which will allow Mr. Fraser to take Oscar and Leo on many
great walks. The fashion designer
Valentino occupies the top floor. While
Mr. Fraser does not have an enormous financial capital, his “social capital” as
a lecturer at Sciences Po carries more sway with the agent and the
landlady. So Matthew, Oscar, and Leo
become residents of “Poodleland.”

“An uncharitablereference to these upper-crust Parisian
precincts where rich ladies can be seen primly walkingtheir well-coiffured little dogs down the
wide and prosperous boulevards.”

Mr. Fraser manages to
inject every one of the ten chapters of his memoir with exquisite details of
French life. This memoir is very
exciting and enjoyable on an intellectual level. Mr. Fraser’s prose is both smart and
pleasing. Each walk with Oscar and Leo
is an opportunity for Mr. Fraser to acquaint the reader with aspects of French
history, as well as a chance to reveal more personal encounters with very
distinctive personalities in Paris and Fontainebleau. For example, he goes on a tour ofTheCimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux
Domestiques, a pet cemetery founded in 1899.
It is the final resting place of some 40,000 animals, including the
canine film star Rin Tin Tin. Mr. Fraser
contrasts this monument to how much the French cherish their pets with a
barbaric annual French custom. French
families typically will get a puppy for the children at Christmas. Then, when summer arrives, so that nothing
interferes with the all-important one-month summer “vacance” (vacation), these
same families will leave 60,000 pet dogs on the side of the road. Mr. Fraser is most adept at depicting the
many paradoxes which lie at the basis of French life.

“France may be a society that has long valued public order; yet the
French people are rebels driven by a constant impulse to defy, protest, and
revolt. Civil disobedience is a national
sport in France. I call this French
national character moral chaos. It is
deeply embedded in the French psyche.
The petty criminal and respectable bourgeois are united in their
inclination to disobedience in even the most banal situations – from turnstile
jumping in the Metro to cheating on tax returns.”

The reader cannot
help but root for Mr. Fraser. He is a
charming, gracious man who is unafraid to reveal his humanity, in how he acted
and reacted to several dramatic, devastating events. He is not destroyed because he has
reconstructed his home. It was a
pleasure to be a guest in that home.

“…a band of teenaged thieves that had
been caught burglarizing the homes of Young Hollywood. Between October 2008 and August 2009, the
bandits had allegedly stolen close to $3 million in clothes, cash, jewelry, handbags,
luggage, and art from a number of young celebrities…The Bling Ring kids were
from Calabasas, a ritzy suburb about thirty minutes from L.A., and that’s why I
headed there. There’d never been a
successful burglary ring in Hollywood before, and somehow it made sense that it
would be a bunch of Valley kids. I wasn’t
sure why it did, but I thought if I went to Calabasas I might find out.”

Miss Sales
originally wrote about the Bling Ring kids in her March 2010 Vanity Fair article, “The
Suspects Wore Louboutins.” She is an
East Coast journalist who often writes about yet maintains her objective
distance from “the celebrity industrial complex.” Filmmaker Sofia Coppola optioned Sales’s
story, and her film adaptation opens tomorrow, June 14, 2013.I have no doubt many audience members, both
teens and adults, will want to see the film because they wish to see beautiful
actors wearing gorgeous clothes getting into all sorts of mischief. Doesn’t that sound like fun?These were good-looking, fashion-savvy kids
who, in the words of one young woman’s attorney, went on a sort of “shopping
spree.” But this IS a true crime story which Miss Sales delivers without irony.The interviews and exchanges with the Bling
Ring kids proves, yet again, that truth is stranger than fiction.TBR carried out their burglaries by being
equally naïve and extremely devious.They had detailed surveillance on their targets with the tools of their
generation:Google Earth, Twitter, and
TMZ.TBR robbed the residences of Paris
Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, Brian Austin Green, and
Audrina Partridge.Sales interviewed the
Bling Ring kids, and has captured each one’s narcissism and “wannabe” sense of
entitlement from growing up near the rich and famous. Parts of the evidence against TBR were photos
they posted of themselves wearing stolen items on their own Facebook pages.These “celebrities” are, in fact, actual
human beings who became victims of terribly invasive crimes.And these “kids” are, in fact, actually
criminals.

Nancy Jo Sales
writes with stylish, crisp and keenly intelligent prose. There’s a sassy turn of phrase here, a nod to
Raymond Chandler there. I particularly
like Miss Sales’s L.A. cop connection “Vince.”
Smart investigator that he is, he knows why TBR did what they did. They did it for the money! She employs history, economics, politics, sociology, and
psychology while deftly moving the story along. Her examination of what compelled and allowed
these “girls and boys” to commit these crimes is provocative and profound. This book would not have been half so
pleasurable without Miss Sales’s dissection and analysis of how and why our 21st
century society has become so obsessed with celebrity, wealth and fame. THE
BLING RING by Nancy Jo Sales is the thinking person’s summer read.